With the UK economy said to be recovering for the first time in six years, any moves to restructure and guide the UK banking sector towards risk prevention is a positive contribution toward strengthening the economy.

On the day that Royal Bank of Scotland announced a bonus payout to it's staff of £588million in spite of an operating loss of £8.24billion, one had to wonder if any lessons were really learnt from the mess that was left after the banking crash only a few years ago...

Banking practices have gone from shoddy to downright cruel. There is no compensation which can bring back the living thing which is a business. Nothing can take away the agony and the pain of knowing just how badly you have been treated, just how wrongly you have been judged.

The Current Account Switch Service was introduced with a minimum of fuss and, in the face of continuing revelations about rate-rigging, mis-selling, rogue-traders and the rest, it will help the industry rebuild consumer trust.

You can be sure that most of my colleagues in the European Parliament do not embrace the concept of the free market. Day after day, I hear them speaking up for state intervention or attempting to regulate away risk. However, there is one area where there is a genuine coalition of interests and that is the need for banking reform.

We all know business and politics are dominated by men. In a rather pathetic indictment of the situation, there are more Eton graduates than women in the Cabinet. But why are we resorting to quotas to address the problem? What happened to skills and talent?

People are angry with banks - they have every right to be after all the scandals that have engulfed the sector. Our small and medium-sized members often feel that the bank will do what is best for itself, rather than the customer. But a thriving economy is dependent on a healthy banking system and banking won't be healthy without trust.

Brussels is wrong to cap bankers' bonuses, just as it was wrong to propose a financial transactions tax a few months ago. Its thinking, however, is along the right lines; having failed to manage their businesses responsibly, bankers need to be kept on a tight leash.

Whilst the government must be careful not to meddle too much in the way banks are run, the sword of Damocles is arguably warranted to change the way they behave, so that they never repeat the errors made in the early noughties that led to the bubble bursting so spectacularly.

The time for action is now. There must be significant changes to the structure and culture of the banking industry. Only then can we start the long road to restoring public confidence and properly protect consumers from a repeat of the financial crisis.

We've recently seen a series of u-turns from the chancellor on Budget measures including the controversial pasty, caravan and charities taxes. George Osborne says he is now focused on the biggest things that matter to the economy. Ahead of his annual Mansion House speech and the expected publication of the White Paper on the Banking Reform Bill on 14 June, we are calling on the government to stand firm on its banking reform commitments. Consumers should never again have to foot the bill for a banking collapse that required a bailout to the tune of £2000 for every man, woman and child. Without strong action that shakes up the culture of British banking, we will all continue to pay the price.

It is clear to me from the final report that it is really a game of trying to please banks and submit to their threats of crashing the UK economy and trying to please the public by showing some kind of action.